Best way to 'advertise' a new terrain.

[Drawyah 13]

So I spent the last few months making a new terrain onto ArmA 3 and recently uploaded it. However, I am not getting very many downloads!

I'm pretty sure its not the map itself, everyone I have showed loves it. I however got the feeling that its because many people abuse the tags on Steam Workshop.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

- Michael

P.S. This is the map (alternate downloads on the description.)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=385314016

[Jackal326 1158]

So I spent the last few months making a new terrain onto ArmA 3 and recently uploaded it. However, I am not getting very many downloads!

I'm pretty sure its not the map itself, everyone I have showed loves it. I however got the feeling that its because many people abuse the tags on Steam Workshop.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

- Michael

P.S. This is the map (alternate downloads on the description.)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=385314016

Maybe less awful music in the trailer (I closed it after 2 seconds). Maybe check the ArmAholic link (they track downloads on each mirror), I bet you've probably had more downloads off of there than you have from Steam Workshop. I know a lot of people who dont frequent the Steam Workshop for various reasons (tag abuse as you've mentioned, auto updates etc).

[Drawyah 13]

Maybe less awful music in the trailer (I closed it after 2 seconds). Maybe check the ArmAholic link (they track downloads on each mirror), I bet you've probably had more downloads off of there than you have from Steam Workshop. I know a lot of people who dont frequent the Steam Workshop for various reasons (tag abuse as you've mentioned, auto updates etc).

Not my video, someone else made it. (And the song is like literally the first 2 seconds.)

[das attorney 857]

Hi Michael,

If you want to promote use of your map, get in contact with some of the teams making game modes and let them know about it (plus you could offer support for them if you feel inclined).

The Alive team for example would need to profile your map and then anyone can use it for their missions (and a lot of people use Alive).

[jshock 512]

Another good way to promote just about anything is to find one of the groups that does a lot of videos, whether it's gameplay, tutorials, reviews, etc.

Armaholic is probably your better bet, for reasons already stated above, but you also need to keep your project "alive", as in answer any questions, keep updates rolling, get more videos of it's use, so on, because people should begin to notice it when it's on the frontpage of Armaholic every other week or so.

[BadHabitz 235]

I'm pretty sure its not the map itself, everyone I have showed loves it.

This is assuming they're not just being kind to you.

Also, keep in mind what you've actually created. Some people might prefer a large land mass over an atoll, so they're not inclined to check out your work.

[Drawyah 13]

This is assuming they're not just being kind to you.

Also, keep in mind what you've actually created. Some people might prefer a large land mass over an atoll, so they're not inclined to check out your work.

True, true.

[MitchTWC 10]

What kind of missions do you envision people making for your map?

I honestly think your limited amount of downloads may be because it's very limited in it's scope in that there's really a very limited amount of ideas mission makers may have for a map such as this.

If you think about it any scenario involving an atoll will by its very nature have to be some kind of amphibious landing or some kind of special forces infiltration mission.

There is also the fact that your island does come across as slightly low quality in some of the images, for instance your screenshot with the US warship in it, it really looks low quality.

Just my honest feedback.

[chrisb 196]

I have the island, just not looked at it yet. However from the vid/pics it looks really nice. It could be good for those that use the sea more in A3, underwater etc.

My only major problem with it is, its not made for A2CO, then it would have been perfect, of course.. Plus I'd get to play it often. ;)

Still, I sightsee in A3, so looking forward to doing that instead.

[Gutsnav 13]

I don't mean to be rude, but here are the main things that I can see wrong:

•The pictures don't show much of the island as a whole.

• Your videos are a bit laggy and (sorry) in my opinion not very attractive. I realize they will likely be replaced as progress on the map continues but the videos and pictures are what catches many people's interest.

• The satellite map is kind of low quality.

• From what I could see the terrain was not very interesting (not the terrain as a whole, it looks really neat). What I mean is that there isn't really any noticeable infrastructure, fences, lights, trash, or stuff like that. The ground looks very flat from what I could see. I know that it is like that in real life but small ditches, rocks, clearings with bushes, sandy clearings and interesting terrain features make maps so much more interesting.

I think this island has a lot of potential and people will catch on, just keep working on it. :D

[brightcandle 114]

My group and I went through a bundle of maps and we passed right over this map due to its shape and variety. Adding a new map is a big deal, we can only run 28 mods total before Windows server can't launch the server anymore and we don't want to be downloading GBs if we can help it. In addition every map requires us to build a tempalte which takes a bit of time choosing the right camouflage and porting over our units and settings and such. So we tend to avoid adding maps unless we are going to get a lot of missions out of it, we don't add one use maps unless its really special. In my opinion this map simply doesn't have the longevity to it in terms of different AOs that many maps would. I don't see how we could use it all that well in our missions. Its unique but its also a more or less one type of mission map and hence is unlikely to get used in our mod list. So many maps don't meet a decent point of performance and interesting multiple terrains for different missions its almost crazy how few maps we actually use in reality.

So your advertising worked in the sense we saw it, got an impression of the type of map it was and found out it wasn't for us. In my experience advertising wasn't the issue it was the fundamental map type, we have a preference for varied terrain with hills, towns and forests with good micro terrain on a landmass. I am sure its right for someone out there but I wouldn't say its a map for the majority of players, its very specific to a niche that uses the water a lot.

[Drawyah 13]

My group and I went through a bundle of maps and we passed right over this map due to its shape and variety. Adding a new map is a big deal, we can only run 28 mods total before Windows server can't launch the server anymore and we don't want to be downloading GBs if we can help it. In addition every map requires us to build a tempalte which takes a bit of time choosing the right camouflage and porting over our units and settings and such. So we tend to avoid adding maps unless we are going to get a lot of missions out of it, we don't add one use maps unless its really special. In my opinion this map simply doesn't have the longevity to it in terms of different AOs that many maps would. I don't see how we could use it all that well in our missions. Its unique but its also a more or less one type of mission map and hence is unlikely to get used in our mod list. So many maps don't meet a decent point of performance and interesting multiple terrains for different missions its almost crazy how few maps we actually use in reality.

So your advertising worked in the sense we saw it, got an impression of the type of map it was and found out it wasn't for us. In my experience advertising wasn't the issue it was the fundamental map type, we have a preference for varied terrain with hills, towns and forests with good micro terrain on a landmass. I am sure its right for someone out there but I wouldn't say its a map for the majority of players, its very specific to a niche that uses the water a lot.

Thanks. If I make a new map in the future, I'll defiantly keep that in mind!

[Von Quest 1161]

Ok, let me chime in quick... Are you serious? The map looks great. Its only been out a few days now, and you all ready have 600 downloads on just Armaholic alone. That's fantastic! Are you kidding?

Hundreds of downloads per day from one website. Pretty damn good. Any and all Maps are welcome. Hell yeah. We plan on using it at some point for training, practice, roleplaying, etc but right now, there are sooo many maps out that we just don't have time to get to them all.

Give it more time. Its only been like, what 3 days now? Geesh. LoL. Maps take a lot of hard drive space and a good commitment of time to invest in since ArmA is super time intensive. Everyone will get around to it at some point. There are a lot of other maps that came out as well the past few months. Hang in there bud...

If you insist in more exposure, keep polishing up that baby. We all know how you feel. You pour yourself into a huge project, and really look forward to a positive response from the community. Often its a good thing to not have a ton of posts on your forum-release thread, as usually that means people are finding problems so they bitch and complain. A quiet thread is good thing. It means all is working as intended.

If you really want more exposure, as I said, keep working on it and your updates will be on the armaholic front page more often. The best advertising you can get. Also if you want to really stand out, a huge and thing you can do, is get into 3D Modeling!! Make a bunch of custom content that you use on your island. Custom buildings, ports, naval, and other things are massively welcome. That would be huge!

You can also release these custom assets later as well if you choose for other map makers. But if you make a handful of custom stuff that can only be found on your island, that would be absolutely a major boost to make that project truely stand out. Over & Out. o7

My 2¢.

[Drawyah 13]

Ok, let me chime in quick... Are you serious? The map looks great. Its only been out a few days now, and you all ready have 600 downloads on just Armaholic alone. That's fantastic! Are you kidding?

Hundreds of downloads per day from one website. Pretty damn good. Any and all Maps are welcome. Hell yeah. We plan on using it at some point for training, practice, roleplaying, etc but right now, there are sooo many maps out that we just don't have time to get to them all.

Give it more time. Its only been like, what 3 days now? Geesh. LoL. Maps take a lot of hard drive space and a good commitment of time to invest in since ArmA is super time intensive. Everyone will get around to it at some point. There are a lot of other maps that came out as well the past few months. Hang in there bud...

If you insist in more exposure, keep polishing up that baby. We all know how you feel. You pour yourself into a huge project, and really look forward to a positive response from the community. Often its a good thing to not have a ton of posts on your forum-release thread, as usually that means people are finding problems so they bitch and complain. A quiet thread is good thing. It means all is working as intended.

If you really want more exposure, as I said, keep working on it and your updates will be on the armaholic front page more often. The best advertising you can get. Also if you want to really stand out, a huge and thing you can do, is get into 3D Modeling!! Make a bunch of custom content that you use on your island. Custom buildings, ports, naval, and other things are massively welcome. That would be huge!

You can also release these custom assets later as well if you choose for other map makers. But if you make a handful of custom stuff that can only be found on your island, that would be absolutely a major boost to make that project truely stand out. Over & Out. o7

My 2¢.

xD Love you too man!

[Drawyah 13]

Well, if around 750 downloads (Total) is good for a Workshop item, I guess I am just used to getting 250k+ subscribes when it comes to this sort of stuff!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=160059572

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

Here's what I look for in maps before I consider downloading and trying them:

High quality screenshots.

A screenshot of the terrain in the map view (textures and no textures)

Some sort of list detailing the features of the map (eg # of airfields, bases, towns etc)

[war_lord 934]

As someone who has ran groups and made missions in the past the main issues with your Island is that A. There's literally 5 Atoll maps out there. B. The other ones are made by "name" modders. C. Your advertising isn't too strong.

Atoll maps are a niche type and there's quite few out there already, including some amazing quality stuff. For what it is I think it has done as well as expected. Most major groups never use these types of map because there just isn't enough quantity to justify the dl.

Oh and ask Armaholic and PWS about getting it up on their website/service respectively. Many Arma 3 players won't touch workshop with a 10 foot pole because of its buggyness with the game.

Edited February 5, 2015 by War_lord

[lukio 18]

First of all - your island looks very nice and I like how you stuck to the geographical details and base layout. If this is your very first terrain in A3, kudos to you!

I just wanted to mention that lots of units look at islands / terrains from a different perspective. Is it usable for a small or large campaign, does it have some kind of staging area away from the the AO, what kind of joint operations could we do etc. I think as nice your island / atoll looks, it does not fit in to general terms units may be looking for. As the description says it's basically a land based aircraft carrier. Sure you could do some underwater invasion style mission and probably lots of training missions, but else wise personally I don't see much other ways to make it work within a larger unit. Atoll maps in general are niche maps and imho do not support large scale operations very well. Sure it's doable but the options for scenarios may be too limiting for most units.